because he had the playfulness and savvy to convene the world’s first underwater Cabinet meeting (Nasheed and his ministers wore diving gear) to dramatize the potential impact of climate change on the Maldives—not to mention the many other places on Earth less than seven feet above sea level, including much of New York, London, and Washington, D.C. because at last year’s U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen he wasn’t afraid to demand what many consider impossible: a return to 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the at­mosphere, a goal which was derided as hopelessly unrealistic by government officials from Washington to Beijing but which more and more science suggests is imperative to our civilization’s survival. “The idea,” as Nasheed told Vanity Fair in Copenhagen, “is that people will agree not to kill others.” (And, in the end, 112 of the world’s less powerful nations did agree.) because before he was an environmentalist he was a freedom fighter who was jailed and tortured while leading a movement against authoritarian government in the Maldives. In 2008, Nasheed became president in the first genuinely free elections in his nation’s history. because he is no saint: like Barack Obama, he is a secret smoker—though, again like Obama, he does not allow himself to be photographed in the act for fear of setting a bad example. (More underwater Cabinet meetings can only help.)